Movie Review: In The Land Of Saints And Sinners (2023)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: Robert Lorenz  

Starring: Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Ciaran Hinds  

Running Time: 106 minutes  

Synopsis: The setting is a rural village in 1970s Ireland. A small IRA unit led by the fiery Doireann (Kerry Condon) is hiding in the area after a botched bombing mission. Finbar Murphy (Liam Neeson) is a local book trader and friends with the town's law officer Vinnie (Ciaran Hinds), but secretly Finbar's real job is to assassinate targets selected by his handler Robert (Colm Meaney). After he decides to retire from killing, Finbar tangles with Doireann's brother, leading to more violence.

What Works Well: Liam Neeson transports his late-career persona as a quiet man capable of brutality to Ireland during The Troubles, and the change of scenery works. Director Robert Lorenz leverages the milieu to surround Finbar Murphy with a rich tapestry of friends, neighbours, shopkeepers, upstarts, veterans, and militants, with the added bonus of beautiful Irish scenery. The ethnic conflict and local score-settling provide Finbar plenty of opportunities to exercise his dark side, and the scenes of violence deftly demonstrate the resultant corrosion of the soul.

What Does Not Work As Well: Finbar's gun-for-hire assassination tasks for Robert appear to fly under all law enforcement radars and remain shrouded in mystery, limiting his background context. With so many local character side-stories brought into focus, some are inevitably neglected in the final act, including a budding fiddler and Doireann's sister-in-law (Sarah Greene) and her daughter.

Conclusion: In this corner of Ireland, saints can be sinners.



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